60% of international graduates land jobs via UK work visas

A recent survey conducted by the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS) has found that the first group of international students who were granted a new UK post-study work visa have high job satisfaction and employment rates, according to a report published by The Pie News.

In 2019, the UK government announced that a new graduate route would be launched in 2021, which would enable international graduates from UK universities to look for work in Britain for a two-year period, or three years for PhD graduates, without the need for employer sponsorship.

Since the launch of the new post-study work visa, it has been widely credited for increasing international recruitment for UK universities despite global market conditions being affected by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Office for National Statistics

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), show that 12,484 UK visa extensions were granted in the new graduate category – with most registering between July and September 2021.

The Pie News reports that against a backdrop of an international education strategy based on facilitating graduate employability, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) surprisingly announced that it would reduce response rate targets from international graduates as part of the graduate outcomes survey.

In December 2021, HESA announced that it would ‘stop calling international graduates’ to gather career data and the target response rate would be lowered to 20% as a result.

With an apparent void of information relating to international graduate outcomes, AGCAS has been partnering with universities to carry out its own sample survey, which was open to international graduates who had completed their studies after June 2021.

More than 1,000 graduates responded and the final results were based on an analysis sample of 345 respondents who were registered on either the graduate route (85%) or the skilled worker visa route (15%).

International education strategy

Helen Atkinson, careers consultant at Newcastle University and co-chair for AGCAS International, told The Pie News: “It’s quite baffling really that in the international education strategy, the government said that they were going to work with the sector to really enhance the body of evidence that we have about international student graduate outcomes.”

“However, at the same time, the HESA policy change really limited the amount of data that institutions have about their students and what they are going to do next. This is why we [AGCAS] decided to run a snapshot survey to understand more about the experiences of international graduates who are seeking employment in the UK,” Ms Atkinson added.

The graduates surveyed by AGCAS studied at 52 UK universities with over 71 nationalities represented. The highest proportion of respondents were Indian graduates (29%) – a statistic that lines up with national graduate visa data that shows a third of visas granted have been for Indian students.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the survey respondents had graduated from a postgraduate course (77%), which now offers the most ‘economical route’ to accessing the UK education system by providing a total visa window of three years for one year of university fees.

Employment across the UK

The survey found that international students secured employment right across the UK, with the majority findings jobs in London (29%), while 4% found jobs that allowed them to work remotely. The majority of students said that their ‘expectations of the graduate visa route were being met (58%)’ against 24% who were dissatisfied.

According to Ms Atkinson, the results of the survey show a wide range of industries and organisation types hiring international graduates.

She said: “We could see universities and local councils [being named as employers] as well as perhaps the more traditional organisations that have always been a bit more inclined to recruit international talent like multinational organisations and financial services firms.”

“One thing that was really interesting, is that we did have a few examples from the survey of large employers that were recruiting graduates both through the graduate route and the skilled worker route. This suggests that some employers might not have a particularly streamlined recruitment process when recruiting international talent,” Ms Atkinson added.

However, AGCAS did acknowledge that there are some caveats to the results of its survey, in particular that completion of the poll may have appealed to the most engaged alumni in a university community, so the results may not represent the bigger picture.

Similarly, the class of 2021 faced less competition from international peers as the first cohort who could secure the graduate visa route and remain in the UK searching for employment.

International student challenges

AGCAS also acknowledged that regardless of post-study work rights, the comments made through its survey did reveal the extent of the challenges that international graduates face in explaining their UK immigration status to potential employers.

Atkinson said: “A high number of respondents reported these difficulties in explaining their immigration status and employers refusing to accept the graduate route as a valid right to work.”

“We had instances of graduates telling us that they were ghosted by recruiters when they were asked about their immigration status. We saw quite emotive, powerful language [from student responses] talking about having to ‘fix’ their immigration status before applying for a job,” Atkinson added.

While many universities and organisations, including UKCISA, HEPI and UUKi, have made attempts to communicate student immigration changes to industry stakeholders, the UK government has not committed to any formal campaigning.

During the UKCISA national conference, delegates lobbied for more campaigning at a national level, and for deeper research and engagement with industry to assist international graduates.

Atkinson said: “We’ve only scratched the surface in terms of this research and we know there’s a lot more work to be done to really analyse the data in more detail to try to understand whether there are clear patterns that maybe impact international graduate success.”

“From our standpoint, we must celebrate and champion the graduate route. It is fantastic news, but equally we can’t gloss over the fact that international graduates are clearly having difficulties explaining their country status to employers during the recruitment processes,” Atkinson added.

High Potential Visa route

Amid the seeming success of the post-study work visa route, the UK government recently launched the High Potential Visa, which is aimed at attracting the world’s top graduates. According to inside sources, talks are ongoing between policymakers about extensions to the UK graduate route to remain competitive with immigration policy from Australia and Canada.

Meanwhile, stakeholders have warned that ‘graduate employability will remain high on the agenda for UK universities as any dissatisfaction from international graduates will quickly feedback to markets and potentially harm future recruitment’.

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